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You are assuming that helmets are safer on bicycles AND on scooters.

You DO realize that helmets are NOT any more safe on bicycles, right?
http://bicyclesafe.com/helmets...

TEDx Copenhagen - Mikael Colville-Andersen - Why We Shouldn't Bike with a Helmet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

If you were actually concerned about safety you would lobby crash helmets for motorists instead of just cyclists or motorcyclists. About 38,000 motorists die on U.S. roads every year compared to fewer than 700 cyclists.

But since we are talking about scooters here, fatalities are usually clumped in with Motorcycles. In 2014 there were 4,295 deaths.

Florida between 2002 and 2008 had a total of 5,660 moped crashes. The average speed was 25 mph in a 35 mph zone.

The use of personal protective equipment did not significantly impact crash outcomes. ...

Previous studies show that nonhelmeted riders have an increased risk of serious injury and poorer hospital outcomes.4, 8, 20 Since over 80% of drivers did not use helmets, this study was likely underpowered to find any significance.

As for concerns about sudden and unexpected obstructions, no amount of smarts, whether human or artificial, will allow a car to avoid hitting, say, a guy who suddenly lands in front of them after jumping off a highway overpass to commit suicide.

Why can't you anticipate that the man who looks like he's about to jump might actually jump?

For the stuff that is avoidable, the sensors on many of these cars are already good enough that they detect children running into the street and respond appropriately before a human has even noticed the issue.

I wonder if they're programmed to avoid following a bicyclist riding in the door zone.

Helmets aren't especially useful and at least some research say, they increase risk to the bicyclist's health.

Given how much more fun it is to ride without one, you may want to reconsider — unless you wear it all the time, even when walking. Just in case a car hits you...

Dunno about jetpacks, but bicycles just aren't fast enough for helmets to perceptibly increase one's chances in a rare accident to justify constantly incurring costs in comfort and situation-awareness during the rest of your riding. Yes, there are statistics showing correlation between fatalities and riding without helmet, but that does not prove causation.

Surely, everyone is entitled to making their own choices, and I'm not going to force anyone to ride without the protection they want. I just want the same freedom for myself.

Actually the typical advice given to bikers is to ride thinking that everyone around you is actively trying to kill you. It works because most people grossly underestimate how others can be *incompetent* but have much less difficulties in thinking about how others could be *malicious*. This is helpful in getting enough caution out of them.

And helmets are only rated to protect against low impact forces. Most people think that helmets off much more protection than they actually do. Safe Cycling skills are much more important.

http://bicyclesafe.com/helmets...

The force a bike helmet needs to withstand is approximately equal to what your head would experience if it just fell 5 feet. Any increased impact from getting thrown by a serious collision, you're on your own.

Actually the typical advice given to bikers is to ride thinking that everyone around you is actively trying to kill you. It works because most people grossly underestimate how others can be *incompetent* but have much less difficulties in thinking about how others could be *malicious*. This is helpful in getting enough caution out of them.

And helmets are only rated to protect against low impact forces. Most people think that helmets off much more protection than they actually do. Safe Cycling skills are much more important.

http://bicyclesafe.com/helmets...

/sarcasm I have a great idea! Let's call everyone who doesn't proselytize The Church of Bike Helmets ideology "idjits" to get them to convert to our religion!

Let us also ignore the data:
http://bicyclesafe.com/helmets.html

Let us also stick our head in the sand and propagate myths
TEDx Copenhagen - Mikael Colville-Andersen - Why We Shouldn't Bike with a Helmet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07o-TASvIxY

Let us also ignore the context for when seatbelts are NOT required such as when a person has been certified with a phobia of seat belts, non-front seat passengers of a motor home, etc.

How can I not possibly win!? /sarcasm

--
FecesBook, noun: Website where everyone posts dumb shit that no ones gives a crap about; aka FazeBook, FagBook, FartBook, etc.

So with your single data point point you are going to proselytize your ideology??

You seem to be ignoring the data:
http://bicyclesafe.com/helmets.html

Helmets are treating the symptom of being unaware instead of focusing on the cause for why you even had an accident in the first place.

I've reported it to the city

Well, you have two legal choices apart from calling the city.

Go ahead.

Call the police and ask that they trigger it for you

If I'll be making these "flag me through" calls often, I'd have to put the PD's non-emergency number in my cell phone's speed dial and change from a pay-per-minute plan to a pay-per-month plan.

No, there's no [...] pedestrian call button.

after you trigger it to permit you to walk

How would I go about doing that?

I don't know of any states that have any exceptions for cyclists when it comes to red lights.

Google dead red law to see news stories about some states' exceptions for small , but I haven't been able to find a U.S.-wide list of these laws organized by state.

Walk signs actually mean cycle on through at top speed

I cycle on the road, not the sidewalk, to avoid several kinds of collision. On streets with a walk sign, I use the walk sign mostly to estimate how stale the green light is.

cyclists must dismount

Which state is that?

Yes, in many states it is LAW that slow vehicles MUST allow faster traffic to pass.

As I understand it, this happens when three motor vehicles are lined up behind a slow-moving vehicle. In such a case, I do yield the lane to motor vehicles.

Most of the time in those accidents the car is turning right after just passing the cyclist.

I'm having trouble visualizing how that would happen. If I pass a cyclist and then make a turn, I've got to slow down. If the cyclist is directly to my right, he will be able to pass me as I slow down for the turn. If he's already behind me, then he should stay behind me or pass me on the left like any other vehicle.

Consider collision types 5,6,&7 on bycyclesafe.com. These are the sorts of events I'm talking about, and their advice is the same as mine. Don't pass on the right. Yet somehow nearly every single time I pass a cyclist and come to a stoplight, he zooms right past me on the right.

I have no bone to pick with cyclists. I don't want to hit them. That's why I want to make them aware of their dangerous habits.

Faulty logic. People do stuff that they know (or should know) will hurt them all the time. They do it a lot when driving cars, anyway, why should bicycles be any different?

When it comes to sharing the road with cars, many people seem to assume that such accidents are usually the cyclist’s fault — a result of reckless or aggressive riding. But an analysis of police reports on 2,752 bike-car accidents in Toronto found that clumsy or inattentive driving by motorists was the cause of 90 percent of these crashes.

ignoring stop signs

Some cyclists do those things, and I can understand why it is frustrating for other people, but it rarely causes accidents: 2% of cases where cyclists were seriously injured in collisions with other road users police said that the rider disobeying a stop sign or traffic light was a likely contributing factor.

ignoring bicycle lanes when they don't need to turn left.

I suppose you mean "turn against oncoming traffic" - left turns are certainly not a problem here... anyway, the main reason for avoiding bike lanes in cities is people parking in cycle lanes. The Door Prize: Cyclists killed by dooring - a list of cyclists killed because of motorists opening their door in the cyclist's path. It happens all the time - I had it happen to me once, and now I will never use a cycle lane that has cars parked along it or in it.

The city cyclists get out there like there's something to prove, riding 4 feet out into the lane

That's because they're used to there being a parked car lane next to the curb and they don't want to get doored.

yup, this thread has my vote too. but you needn't follow anyone's formula, just find a way to work some miles into your life. i eat as much as i want and frequently drink a 6-pack of beer in an evening, and if i am a couch potato i swell up in short order. my office is less than a mile from home, so riding to/from work doesn't really put a dent in the waistline. however, there are times when i take the long way, and almost every day i do something other than go to work--be that go out to dinner, go shopping, go to friends' homes, the movies, whatever. and i ride there.

i grant you i have it super-easy since i moved to the most cycle-friendly city in the world, but i came from texas where i was frequently threatened by drivers and heat stroke and i did it there, too. definitely start with some advice from a local as to routes, or at least read http://bicyclesafe.com/ so you don't make any dumb moves or take any suboptimal routes (the interstate? almost always suboptimal.)

definitely do ramp up slowly (anything is better than nothing) to minimize discouragement and keep discomfort manageable. definitely do get a bike that's in decent shape--need not be expensive, needs be maintained regularly like a car (or maybe even more so--i pump up my bike tires weekly and reapply lube...welll..should be monthly). get appropriate clothing--this may not be spandex, but it is also probably not your work clothing. the pain you feel from the exercise shouldn't be surface or joint pain, it should be muscle pain. if you get joint pain, you might need to adjust the fit of the bike; surface pain suggests different clothing (i chafe between the thighs unless i wear spandex, be it under my clothes or exclusively, for instance). as well, bike sizing matters--every bike is not right for every person, and riding a badly sized one can injure you. so a little professional or amateur help (i hang out on some local general-interest message boards and offer to help people pick something sane from craigslist; i know others do the same in other locales. or just go to a bike shop & pay for the advice.)

these things will keep your riding more pleasant & safe.

good luck!

This has long been the advice for bicyclists. I first heard it from Austin bicyclist Michael Bluejay. It's good advice for anyone on the road. And especially important for cars with turn signals on--I've been a passenger in an accident that occurred because someone had their turn signal on and didn't turn.

It's often helpful to ride in such a way that motorists won't hit you even if they don't see you. You're not trying to BE invisible, you're trying to make it irrelevant whether cars see you or not. If you ride in such a way that a car has to see you to take action to avoid hitting you (e.g., by their slowing down or changing lanes), then that means they will definitely hit you if they don't see you. But if you stay out of their way, then you won't get hit even if they didn't notice you were there.

You do realize this is total flamebait, right? Saying you can't stand bikers because of the "stunts" that some of them pull. Cars try to pass bicyclists even if it doesn't make sense. Where I live, I can easily go faster than cars on residential streets and downtown. I'll have a car behind me while I'm at a stop sign, and when I start to go the car behind me often guns it and tries to overtake me--only to stop at the next stop sign, at the next block. It's even more frustrating since bikes here are allowed to yield at stop signs without necessarily stopping, so I can keep pedalling for several blocks while the car behind me has to come to a complete stop at any intersection. Even worse is the "right hook" (see collision type #4), where the car overtakes you only to turn right, cutting you off and potentially killing you.

However, when I'm on my way to school or work and a car is travelling 5-10mph below the speed limit I get pretty annoyed. So when its a biker who isn't hugging the curb, but instead taking up an entire lane, I reserve the right to get pissed.

Laws depend on where you live, but in Texas the law was that bicyclists can take any lane less than 15 ft wide. Honestly, an SUV cannot safely pass a biker when the lane is narrower than 15 ft. And although someone already made this comment, hugging the right side of the lane can be damn dangerous when there is a line of parked cars. A friend of mine tore her ACL when some jackass opened his car door without looking. She was riding in a bike lane, too.

I'm responding to you rather than flaming because you obviously don't know the perils of bicycling with cars around. Read through that bike safety site I linked too--these types of collisions are how bicyclists get killed.

On the other hand, I'm not defending irresponsible bikers, such as the ones that go the wrong way down one-way streets, or blow through stop signs when traffic is coming, or bike at night without blinkers.